Still not using your phone to make payments?

While mobile wallets are still quite a novelty in Slovenia, using your phone to make payments is well-established abroad. If you are not using any of the digital wallets on the market yet, it is time to read up on them.

A mobile wallet is a virtual wallet that stores your credit card information on a mobile device. It is a convenient method that simplifies payment transactions, because it uses NFC technology to establish a wireless connection between a smartphone and a POS terminal to allow for a wireless payment. The data transmission and reception is controlled by an identification system; this means deceptive acts (such as identity theft) are much less likely than in credit card transactions. The smartphone is namely locked with a password or finger print and the mobile wallet is also encoded. Mobile phone payments are not only advantageous to consumers, but also to retailers, as they reduce in-store lines and payment times.

According to data from a survey carried out by Allied Market Research in 2017, the global mobile payment market is set to increase by 33.4% every year from 2016 to 2022. The three most popular mobile payment services are Apple Pay, Android Pay and Samsung Pay, the very three tech giants that also put the most attention on security when creating the mobile payment services. During a transaction, the retailer cannot see the credit card number, authorization code or the card holder’s name. This is because the transaction itself does not use the credit card number: instead, a unique code called a token is created as the means for authorizing the purchase, which expires after the transaction and then disappears.

Even though the number of mobile payments is growing exponentially abroad, we are more interested in what is currently available on the Slovenian market. Two years ago, Intesa Sanpaolo Bank introduced its Wave2Pay mobile wallet for Mastercard holders, which has also been expanded to Visa holders. Another service is mBills, while the arrival of the Apple Pay mobile wallet in collaboration with a local bank has also been announced. Recently, the NLB Pay mobile wallet was launched, which enables Mastercard holders to make purchases. It differs from other services because it completely replaces all the payment cards of one of Slovenian banks. However, the fact remains that mobile wallets introduced by the banks are still mostly limited to the Android operating system and a necessary prerequisite is an enabled NFC wireless communication.